


All That Remains

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Going from the bad ending of Alexios at the dinner table alone, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 19:10:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20296528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: After the confrontation on Mount Taygetos, Alexios was left with an empty house.How was this worth it all?





	All That Remains

Alexios looked around the house that he had spent so much time attempting to reclaim and asked himself what the point was.

Leonidas’s heirs had reclaimed a home in Sparta. And now, there was only the one.

Myrrine – his mother, the woman he’d been separated from for so long – was dead. Dead at the hands of her own daughter, corrupted as she had been by the gods-damned Cult of Kosmos. And Deimos – Alexios refused to let himself think of the sister he’d lost as the monster who’d killed their mother, Kassandra had died long ago – was dead at his hands in response to her actions. 

So many had died in the time since he’d left Kephallonia. He didn’t know if Markos had survived the plague – the plague he’d unknowingly allowed to spread across the island, because he’d been unable to let those Phoibe had cared about be slaughtered. Phoibe herself, dead at the hands of Deimos, as was Brasidus, and-

The Cult of Kosmos had taken much. He sometimes wondered why it was that he hadn’t slain Aspasia for her role as the leader of the Cult. He should have killed her. He’d wanted to, even as she spun her tale of how the Cult had slid from its original purpose, been twisted and corrupted. 

Alexios was just... TIRED of killing. Perhaps a poor attitude for the deadliest mercenary in the known world, but... Death had been following him for a long time now.

Too long. 

He thought about what this had meant for him, for mater. It had been what had driven so much of their actions – to reclaim the home that was rightfully theirs.

Even before the Cult, before Deimos, before the streets ran red with blood, that had seemed... less than fulfilling. But it had been mater’s wish. She’d wanted to return to Sparta, to the place she’d once called home.

But she was in no place now to savor this victory.

Alexios shut his eyes and turned his head, as though he could banish the memory of cradling his mother’s body, hearing her dying breaths, so easily.

No, Myrrine would not walk these rooms again. Would not call him ‘lamb.’ Would not... 

He had to stop thinking of it, if only to spare himself the pain.

As for Alexios... He’d thought it over much in the time since mater had suggested reclaiming “their home” in Sparta. He’d ultimately come to a conclusion.

His blood came from Sparta, but he himself? He held no love for it. Sparta had ordered the death of his sister. For the sake of Sparta, Nikolaos had accepted that his child had to die. By order of Sparta, Nikolaos had been ordered to kill Alexios for interfering.

On the peak of Mount Taygetos, Deimos had said “even in the world of beasts, a family protects its young.” For all her madness, she’d been right about that. Nikolaos had failed to do that, had been the threat to his family he should have protected them from. Alexios remembered that Brasidius had expressed anger, even disappointment when he revealed that he knew that Alexios had been responsible for Nikolaos’s death, and Alexios had had no chance to explain. But he was not going to regret or mourn the dead man who’d destroyed his family. Perhaps it hadn’t been as satisfactory as it could have been... But he could not raise the dead. Even if he could, there were far more worthy souls who deserved that privilege.

Phoibe, stolen without having a chance. Mater, dead by her idealism and hope she could bring her daughter back. Kassandra, dead long before Alexios had slain Deimos. 

All because someone had whispered words in the ear of some Spartan lord to convince him that not only must Leonidas’s heirs die, but that their own pater be the instrument of it. 

Alexios looked around the home that had been mater’s dream to return to. The empty house, holding not even ghosts. She had been so determined, so ready to rebuild the life that she’d left behind, as if she were still that same person, that she could take back what had been.

He’d never said it to her face, but Alexios wondered – doubted – if Kassandra could ever have been saved. She had been taken from them, broken by the Cult’s witch, built into a tool for the Cult, groomed to be their weapon, the spear, the sword, the dagger that they would hold to the throat of the world. He’d never been convinced that he could save his sister. He had tried, for mater’s sake, but...

He’d seen into Deimos’s mind, with the Cult’s artifact. He’d seen someone who had known only violence, been abused her whole life, and told that made her stronger than all others. Deimos had been a monster, given the blood on her hands, but she was a pitiable one.

She had been broken a long time ago. No healing by mortal hands could proceed to put her back together and make her the sister that Alexios should have known. Mater had looked upon her only with the eyes of a mother, of someone who wanted to bring the tattered pieces of her family back together.

Alexios knew that was not possible. He’d told mater that he would try to save Kassandra, but he could only view that effort as having been doomed from the start. His sister had died long before he’d met Deimos. Mater had not been able to give up her daughter so easily... And her faith that she could reach that smothered ember of her daughter had placed her too close to the blade of the weapon of the Cult of Kosmos, not her daughter.

As these thoughts bounced around in his head, he realized that the air in this place felt foul. 

This was a place that had meant everything to mater, a place where she had once called home and wished to again. But to Alexios...

This place represented nothing but what had ordered all the pain and misery visited upon his family, that had led to the deaths of so many he’d cared about.

And for what? Blood? The bloodline of Leonidas? For whatever reason, that had been viewed as a threat to the Cult, one that they decided to try and turn in their favor after getting their hands on Kassandra. 

Alexios had a thought – if the Cult, an assemblage of people, had learned of the blood of Leonidas, had decided that they viewed as either a threat to stop – to murder children to protect their interests – or a weapon to be used – another Deimos, or perhaps even a worse creature than that – then surely others might at some point. His family’s bloodline was a liability. It was a noose. He could not trust that the Cult being wiped out would be enough to prevent someone else from coming along and trying to use it to their interests.

And, even if he spared any children from the burden that was his blood by intent, there were certainly ways that those who wanted to control it would try to use him, so long as they knew he was alive. It would be something that any who learned of his bloodline, his heritage might try to turn to their advantage – he knew there were drugs that could force a man to be capable of the act of sex, whether or not he was interested in his partner or not. To them, the fact that he felt no such stir towards women would be easily ignored, even if they didn’t have one of the strange, golden objects that he’d recovered for Pythagoras. Mortals were capable of their own ways of denying one the choice in such matters, even before one got to the possibilities of the interference of gods – or whatever these precursors were if they were not gods.

It wasn’t difficult to decide what he should do.

In less than five minutes, he had gathered up what little he wanted to take with him.

It was another five minutes to spread the oil.

It was far too late in the night for anyone to come running immediately. The light of the fire would surely draw attention before long, that or the smoke. But without the sound of screaming, without the sound of someone within burning, it would be unnoticed long enough for him to slip away unseen. As the house burned, Alexios walked away from the site, and, while the regrets were with him still – perhaps would always be so – there was also a relief.

Leonidas’s legacy had been more mater’s than his. Sparta had never been a place of love in his heart. Leaving it behind was no hardship. Letting it burn... 

Well, burning away his ties to Sparta felt good.

With luck, it would be believed he had been inside by any who would question what become of Leonidas’s heir, a title he’d never truly claimed as his own. There would certainly be those who came looking for him over time – he was a known face, his myth had spread across the known world. But a swaggering Spartan was what the people would expect. A humble man without a home country, not so much. 

He considered leaving the spear of Leonidas behind – that would certainly make any who would look for him think he was dead. Yet... It still tied him to his family. To mater, who had gifted it to him, so long ago. He wasn’t ready to let go the last physical tie to mater just yet. Perhaps when he was, he might hand it off to Barnabas or Herodotus, who could send it afar, let it fade into myth and legend.

Meanwhile, that would allow Alexios to simply fade away. 

Perhaps that would be for the best.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, the game actively punishing you, not allowing you to redeem Deimos if you didn't spare Nikoloas REALLY bugs the crap out of me - like Deimos says, this "family" didn't protect his young. 
> 
> And don't even start me on the bullshit of the Eagle Bearer "deciding their bloodline must be carried on" through Legacy of the First Blade, precisely because the base game's plot explicitly said all of this misery and destruction happened BECAUSE of the bloodline. I spit upon that DLC and refuse to acknowledge it.


End file.
